Recep Tayyip Erdogan sniffs an opening as he snubs Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are no longer close allies. Picture: AFP.

They looked like a bunch of blokes flying off on a weekend stag do: blue T-shirts, bearded, well fed, posing on the plane, arms linked with the wiry figure of President Zelensky. They were the five surviving commanders of last year’s 80-day Russian siege of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, a horrific action that left Ukraine’s defenders haggard and traumatised. An exchange in September saw most of the Azovstal prisoners swapped for Russians but the commanders were only freed on the condition they be kept under tight surveillance in Turkey until the end of the war, unable to return to the battlefield.

Now President Erdogan, the Turkish leader, has broken his promise to President Putin and freed them, a gift to Zelensky. Russian commentators are furious. “Turkey is becoming an unfriendly country,” fumed Viktor Bondarev, a Russian senator. Sergey Mardan, a propagandist, told Russian television viewers: “Let’s all of us share this feeling of national humiliation.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (2R) on a plane with commanders of defenders of the Azovstal steel plant. Picture: AFP.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the Kremlin. Turkey is a Nato member, it was heading into an alliance summit and wanted to deflect attention from its rather ambiguous relations with Putin’s regime. And Moscow has known for well over 18 months that Turkey has been supplying Ukraine with Bayraktar attack drones. If in doubt, the Kremlin needs only to watch the Eurovision-esque singalong YouTube clips of uniformed Ukrainian bands celebrating the weapon.

But it seems that Erdogan, having just won re-election, is performing a real pivot. He has told Zelensky he backs Ukrainian membership of Nato, has withdrawn his opposition to Swedish membership and is offering Turkish warships to escort Ukrainian grain deliveries through the Black Sea if Russia refuses to renew the deal next week. He has even authorised France to monitor a nuclear reactor Russia is building in Turkey. A veritable snub-fest is being dished out for Moscow.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds bilateral talks with Joe Biden at the NATO Summit. Picture: AFP.

These moves are, of course, transactional. In return for not blackballing Swedish membership of Nato, Stockholm has tightened measures against Kurdish activists. A side deal with the United States could smooth the way for deliveries of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

Above all, Erdogan needs to attract western investment and revive the faith of the markets. Neither Russia nor the Gulf can fund Turkey’s depleted central bank reserves. The country’s finances are in a ragged state. Hence this week’s demand that talks about Turkish EU entry be rekindled. There is barely a chance of this happening. After all, a great chunk of EU aid to Turkey is premised on the country acting as a buffer against millions of refugees heading into Europe.

So it’s the illusion of a western tilt that Erdogan wants to create rather than its reality. But there is a serious component to his diplomacy. Since Yevgeny Prigozhin’s feeble march on Moscow, Putin is no longer the strongman’s strongman. In 2016, Erdogan faced a coup when officers tried to topple him (and Putin offered military support). Erdogan’s response: TV appeals calling on Turks to resist the putschists, a state of emergency, sacking 4,000 judges and prosecutors, closing newspapers, terror legislation against the Kurds.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion has weakened Vladimir Putin. Picture: AFP.

Putin, by contrast, has sleepwalked through his own crisis of legitimacy. Wagner mercenaries have been offered jobs at the Ministry of Defence. Erdogan’s respect for his Kremlin crony has gone and this is perhaps the most important development from the Prigozhin fiasco. It is not that the sultan is hugging the West but he does seem to have frozen his membership of the Ottoman-Romanov neo-imperial strongman’s club. He may even be calculating that he can outrun Putin and act as a credible champion of the global south. Leaders from South Africa, Zambia, Egypt and Senegal, among others, met Putin in Moscow last month. They told him if he really wanted to convene a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in July he had to show himself capable of peace gestures. They suggested further prisoner exchanges and the return to Ukraine of children snatched by the Russian invaders. Most of all, though, they worry about galloping inflation generated by food, energy and fertilisers.

Volodymyr Zelensky with Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey is offering warships to escort Ukrainian grain deliveries through the Black Sea. Picture: Getty Images.

That’s where the difference between the autocratic styles of Putin and Erdogan become clear. Putin has been operating as a global disrupter. But he fails to fill the power vacuums this creates. Russia’s dogged war-making in Ukraine is used as a testing ground for weapons and tactics but the results are too meagre and messy to act as an advertisement for Moscow’s arms sales to African states that want their wars to end quickly. Turkey, with its cheap attack drones, has become a more attractive partner.

The same goes for Russia’s weaponising of food against Ukraine – laying mines in arable land, blowing up dams, blocking ports, the bombardment of grain silos – which hits Kyiv’s many agricultural customers in Africa. Putin was trusted in the south as a standard-bearer of the old Soviet third-world partnerships. Now that trust is oozing away. And Turkey, by vowing to defend the grain traffic through the Black Sea, suddenly looks as if it understands the world beyond the European battlefield.

Erdogan may still be avoiding a clear-cut choice between the West and the Kremlin, and he remains more enigmatic in his way than Putin. He is a master of the political pirouette. One outcome of this week’s Nato summit is predictable: everyone will leave it baffled by the intentions of the Turkish leader. He will be satisfied by that.

The Times